Groaning, I slowly opened my eyes and rolled over. The dry rustle of dead plants rubbing up against each other filled my consciousness… I thought it odd that my bed so much harder and the smell was all wrong… It took me several seconds to register the rough stone above me. Then it all came back, at first my mind tried to convince me that it was all a particularly realistic dream, but looking around me made it clear enough. A couple faces passed through my mind some names of people I would never see again, it had never truly sunk in; everything had moved so fast it had been overwhelming so I had just gone numb, gone with the flow, just superficially accepted that ‘oh this is a new world, how cool and not scary at all’. But now I had a moment to take a breath and look back at what had happened… and realize how crazy it all was, how utterly terrifying.

               I kept my breathing measured and deep, successfully keeping myself as calm as could be expected given the situation. I was in a new Fucking world!! It was still hard to believe, I mean sure the lynx was unnaturally tenacious managing to live for such a long time with a half severed head, but there to this point there hasn’t been anything that screamed new world… well besides Dunfor, but he talked one time so my mind probably just chalked it up to a hallucination.

               Speaking about Dunfor… I picked up the blade that I had left out of its scabbard some blood had dried on the blade causing bits of grass and dirt to stick to it. I contemplated the sword, turning it over in my hands a few times before asking it “how’re you doing Dunfor”

               Nothing, not a sound escaped the sword for what seemed like an eternity before finally he spoke. Well spoke is a bit generous he said a grand total of two words, “I’m Dirty” well I guess you could argue three words if you counted the contraction as two but the point stands.  

               I really didn’t know how to respond to his statement. After a long moment I simply apologized and thought about how to clean him, it would be good to do something with my hands to keep the panic that was currently threatening to sweep me into hysterics. Tearing my mind away from the whole panic thing I realized my sword cleaning resources were rather limited including only: Grass, rocks and a river. The lynx’ blood was coated pretty thickly so grass would probably not be terribly effective so I opted for water and rocks. I walked out of the cave and was temporarily blinded by the midmorning sunlight streaming directly into my eyes. Shading my eyes as best I could with my hand I walked to the gently flowing river. I knelt down by the sparkling waters and submerged Dunfor’s blade. A few specks of dirt and a stalk of grass or two came off but the sword was hardly clean. So I picked up a rock from the riverbed and began to run it along the blood covered blade. This method wasn’t terribly effective ether, only a small clump of bloody dirt and grass came off with each stroke of the rock. I persevered in my cleaning of the sword and in twenty minutes or so the blade was free of any large clumps of blood. The little that remained I managed to scrub off with some grass that I gathered from the nearby meadow.

               Satisfied with my blade cleaning, and having significantly recovered from my near hysteric meltdown, I pondered what to do next when I heard a deep rumble. I realized that I hadn’t eaten all of yesterday and hadn’t drank nearly enough water. Now that I knew this I became acutely aware of the gnawing pain in my stomach that I had somehow not noticed until now. I walked, somewhat hurriedly, back to the grotto I had conquered, threw the newly cleaned Dunfor into his sheathe and plopped down next to my bag to see what was for breakfast. The food in the bag consisted of two parts some condensed mush and one part dried meat. I tried a bit of the mush, it was bland, very bland, but it filled me up surprisingly quickly; I had only eaten about two mouthfuls before the gnawing pain in my stomach was completely gone, after a moment I even felt a little bloated as if the stuff had expanded in my stomach.

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               I examined my food supplies a little more closely and found that with the amount of the mush I had I could easily live for two to three weeks and if the meat stuff was anything like the mush I could go for even longer. Not having to worry about food took a weight off my mind that I hadn’t even known was there.

               Ever since it had sunk in that this was truly a different world magic had been at the back of my brain, hack it was probably there before but my practical earth brain just ignored it. I wanted to learn magic, badly. The part about being able to change my age was pretty interesting too, but let’s be real here, magic. Need I say more?

               So this left me facing a rather puzzling question… how does one do magic? The only real information I had to go on was the bit in Meril’s book I had taken note of, since I wasn’t subconsciously looking at it as a work of fiction anymore I quickly read through the section on magic again. I put the book down, closed my eyes, and tried ‘knowing what I wanted to happen’ whatever that means. Unsurprisingly no ball of light appeared before me, I had suspected that magic was a little more complicated than that. While I hadn’t given up I decided to try the whole age change thing, maybe it was easier.

               I once again closed my eyes. I tried to imagine myself as a five year old. I stayed like that for a solid five minutes before opening my eyes and realizing the grotto looked significantly larger than it had before. For some reason my clothes weren’t baggy though…. Must be some magic or other. Honestly my mind kind of glanced over that fact as I rushed to the river to see the results of my transformation. As I intently stared down at the water gathered in my hands I saw a youthful face staring back… Success!! I went back to my cave smiling from ear to ear. I don’t know if this was considered magic or not, but to me I had just cast my first successful spell.

               Running off the excitement from my success I ate half a mouthful of the mush and drank a large quantity of water from my canteen before sitting cross-legged in the middle of the first room to try magic again. I tried to do the same thing I had done with the transformation. I opened my eyes expectantly to find… nothing. I tried again five or six more times before I accepted that I must be doing something fundamentally wrong. Unfortunately I had no way to know what. Luckily for me there were people in this world who did know and just happened to teach it to children around five years of age.

               Knowing that such people lived in towns I came to a decision. Taking out the map and squinted at it, but the sunlight was again fading from the heavens so I couldn’t make out the finer details of the. I decided that I would hit my little hay pile early and I could figure out the specifics of how I would proceed. All I knew was that I was going to go on a grand adventure.